Dear all,
What a summer it has been! Ten days in the Southwest at a conference I was asked to keynote, a week paddling in southern Ontario, a week in British Columbia with our youngest son and his family, a wedding in Alabama. It feels like my mind, body and heart have all been challenged to their limits, and I've received many gifts as a result. As the summer draws to a close, I'm hoping to not just get caught up in busyness, but to take time to treasure and build on those gifts.
Love,
Pamela
Remembering
What do you do when it’s too painful to remember what happened in the past? You forget. And keeping things forgotten becomes an important part of your ongoing survival strategy. If you can’t totally forget and can’t afford to remember, you blur the edges of that reality, or create an alternative story to fit in that space.
What do we, as settlers, do about our history of extermination of native peoples? We bury it as deep as we can in the past. The most convenient story to tell ourselves is that it is over, that there is nobody left. If we do sometimes come across the existence of native Americans in the present, we need to find boxes to put them in—poor Indians on the reservation whose poverty is somehow inevitable, or noble and wise indigenous elders whose purpose in life is to save us from ourselves.
For those who have borne the brunt of genocide, the forgetting strategies are different. Alcohol is one. Suicide is another.
Neither of these sets of strategies will move us forward. The hard truth is that we have to remember. And to gather the strength to do that, we need each other. Those with a settler past need to find others with whom to look straight at our bloody history and face the grief of it. Native peoples need to find others with whom to grieve genocide and reclaim their heritage and strength. And we need to come to know each other as peers in the struggle to forge a path forward that includes us all.
I spent five days in late July paddling down the Grand River in southern Ontario with members of the Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora) and others of settler ancestry. I’d like to contribute to the process of remembering by offering up a handful of real, live, ordinary, wonderful indigenous people whom I would never want to forget.
L. is passionate about healing. She left a well-paying job to reinvigorate local healing rituals and seek out other healing knowledge to bring back to the community. Her seventeen-year-old daughter was in the community smoke dance, first in a traditional women’s dance with beautiful shawls spread out like wings, then in the “switch” dance, where she took on a man’s costume and stomped and twirled. L’s nine-year-old daughter is a fearless athlete who is very interested in traditional music; at the opening ceremony, she offered a water song in a clear confident voice.
J. is proud of her Oneida heritage and is learning the language from her grandfather as she tries to pursue a living via her art. She got her traditional name from her great grandmother, and could have taken another name when she came of age, but is happy with the one she was given. She loves to sing.
MD.’s eyes pierce and twinkle at the same time. Wearing a skull-cap with a few feathers hanging down the back, he leads us in a simple chant one morning as we launch, and offers traditional teaching in the closing ceremony. He is passionate about inviting youth to outdoor challenges as a path to a healthier perspective on themselves and their world.
B. teaches social work at a university and has teamed up with a non-native colleague to explore the dynamics and impact of the Two Row paddle, through both their own relationship on the water and the experience of others. She exudes an aura of warmth and calm, and is a strong traditional singer. On the water one afternoon as we raft up to wait for stragglers, she, MD, and J sing for us.
M is in her forties, with bright blue highlights in her hair. When she offers the Thanksgiving address in Cayuga, she asks us to remember that she is just a beginner. Since there are only about 100 native speakers left, she feels a sense of pressure to learn. Now that her mother is sick, she is moving into the position of an elder, but is not sure that she is ready. She laments the loss of three people to opioid overdoses and a suicide in the past week.
R. doesn’t have much to say, but he clearly knows what he’s doing with a canoe. He paddles with three small children in the front, and I learn that he is their foster parent. I know that he speaks Cayuga from the way he responds when M. gives the Thanksgiving address.
J. is a spirited young woman who got a tattoo of great eagle wings on her shoulders last year. This year she shows us a new tattoo on her thigh with a quote from John Wayne, one of her favorites. She is fierce about respecting people’s right to their own beliefs. A hairdresser, she hears a lot at work. When things get too negative, she says she inserts something positive—or even stupid—to change the tone.
BL. is serious when he gives the Thanksgiving address (in Mohawk), then cuts up on the water, joking and teasing. A teacher on the reserve, he has to leave the paddle for a few days because his daughter has a health crisis and he needs to care for his three granddaughters.
K. recently got a job at a cultural center. She offers a very competent PowerPoint presentation on the local residential school, then chokes up as she reads an old letter from a student about the horrors there. She apologizes for her lack of professionalism.
G. talks about his eleven years in a residential school—how they were given numbers instead of names, were always hungry, worked hard on the farm, scrabbled through the dump for candy or canned goods, never got a sign of affection, were robbed of language, culture and ceremony. He left hating everyone and everything and turned to alcohol. It was only after many years that he decided to organize a reunion of residential school students and found his calling in supporting the healing of others.
A woman with a health job offers us a tasty breakfast one morning of white corn and berries. She is interested in promoting the health benefits of traditional foods, and says that some farmers are now planting a few acres of white corn to give away to anyone who wants some. A man who offers an evening presentation on native history in the area is clearly a gold mine of information about his people. Six young men lead us one evening in social dancing, one explaining the dances, while the others demonstrate and sing, in an endearing combination of pride and embarrassment.
E., the center of our group, grew up on the river, and used to paddle to school because the bus took such a long time. She taught special ed for many years, and seems to know everyone. Slim and strong, she is a no-nonsense leader with a delightful sense of humor, and is openly moved by signs of community and hope for her people.
Imagine: A New Economy Is Possible!
Financial transformation in Ecuador
From 2006 to 2016, Ecuador’s poverty rate declined by 38 percent and the rate of extreme poverty by 47 percent while inequality also decreased. These gains are due in part to a set of reforms instituted by a new president who broke with mainstream economic thinking. Ecuador’s government under President Correa:
• re-nationalized the central bank
• redefined the financial sector to include popular and solidarity-based economies fueled by credit unions, cooperatives, and savings and loan associations.
• declared its international bond debt "illegal" and refused to pay some $30 million in interest on the country’s remaining debt
• taxed capital leaving the country and required banks to hold 45 percent of their liquid assets domestically.
These new revenues were used to increase the government’s monthly payouts to its most vulnerable populations. It also removed financial institutions’ charges on checking and savings accounts an lowered ATM fees, and made substantial investments in public education and health.
https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/ecuadors-citizen-revolution?mc_cid=91a4b26f85&mc_eid=b2f3d85ae2
Several things that have made me hopeful recently
Thoughtful new conversation in the US about the role of our historic statues and heroes—what they teach us about our past and our present, and there they belong. I found the Mayor of New Orleans particularly eloquent: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/mitch-landrieus-speech-transcript.html
The Cape Town, South Africa, mayor’s announcement of the city’s commitment to divest from fossil fuel assets in favor of more sustainable investments.
http://350africa.org/cape-town-commits-to-divestment/
Thirty Portland-area churches that have pledged to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants As ICE increases its arrests.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/sanctuary/4-things-to-ask-yourself-before-offering-shelter-to-immigrants-facing-deportation-20170725
All the caring, compassion and generosity of neighbors and strangers that become so visible in times of tragedy.
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
Check out this new book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
